November 30, 2011

All the cool kids in the skeptical blogosphere are talking about
Stanislaw Burzynski, and I didn't want to be left out. Never heard of
him? I hadn't either, until yesterday, when the Internet, as we know it,
exploded on Dr. Burzynski's head.

Here are the salient facts, as I understand them:

Dr.
Burzynski owns and runs The Burzynski Clinic, in Texas. The Burzynski
clinic specializes in "Alternative Cancer Treatments." According to its
website, the clinic also offers conventional, FDA approved cancer
treatment, but that's not what they are currently in the spotlight for.
One of the modalities they offer is something called "Antineoplaston"
therapy. It is this treatment that everyone seems to be talking about
right now.

Antineoplastons were "discovered" by Dr.
Burzynski, himself. Dr. Burzynski has published the results of several
clinical trials of this therapy which appear to show effecacy. These
studies were published in fringe journals with questionable peer review
policies and, often, questionable professional detachment from the
subject (they are journals whose purpose is the publication of studies
supporting alternative medicine). Other researchers have been unable to
reliably replicate Dr. Burzynski's findings. In fact, 100% of properly
blinded, randomized, placebo controlled, peer reviewed trials published in
reputable journals have been negative - that is, they all fail to show
any benefit at all of Antineoplaston therapy in the treatment of cancer.
The FDA has not approved Antineoplastons for use in cancer treatment in
the USA. That means that doing so is against the law.

It
is not, however, against the law to administer Antineoplaston therapy
if it is done as part of a registered clinical trial. Dr. Burzynski has
been running "clinical trials" of Antineoplaston use in the treatment of
cancer for over thirty years. People travel from all over the world to
the Burzynski Clinic to receive treatment participate in a clinical trial, and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so.

Recently,
several prominent medical and skeptical bloggers have published
articles critical of Dr. Burzynski and his Antineoplaston therapy, and
calling into question Dr. Burzynski's research, and the ethics of his
practice of charging patients exorbitant amounts of money to receive treatment
participate in a clinical trial of a drug that has not been
demonstrated to be effective at all. In most instances, when faced with
criticism or questioning of their research, scientists respond by
presenting the evidence which supports their work, but that doesn't seem
to be what's happened here.

Instead, these bloggers
were contacted by a gentleman by the name of Marc Stephens, claiming to
"represent the Burzynski Clinic, Burzynski Research Institute, and Dr.
Stanislaw Burzynski," and threatening legal action if the "libelous and
defamatory information" was not removed from their websites. It turns
out Mr. Stephens is not a lawyer, but an employee of The Burzynski
Clinic who may or may not have overreached in his zeal to defend his
employer. In what has become known as "The Streisand Effect,"
an attempt to suppress criticism on the Internet has resulted in that
criticism becoming far more widespread than it ever would have.
Virtually every skeptical blog I read has posted an article about
Burzynski over the past two days. Well done, Marc.

Word
is Mr. Stephens is no longer employed by Burzynski. He appears to have
been thrown under the bus by his former employer in a desperate attempt
at damage control as this story spirals out of control across the World
Wide Web. And Dr. Burzynski is learning a valuable lesson. If your
particular form of pseudoscience has been the subject of criticism on
the Internet, either bring the evidence, or, if you don't actually have
any evidence, lay low and hope it all blows over. Making lame and empty
threats is only going to turn you into a deer in the headlights of the
monster truck that is the web.

Splat.

To read more about this topic, I recommend you start here, here, and here, and then go on from that.

November 24, 2011

Yesterday, a group of concerned parents held a protest at the local
school board offices, demanding to have wifi internet routers removed
from public schools in York Region. Click here
to watch video news coverage from the local media. Happily, it appears
there was a very small turn-out, perhaps 5 or 6 mothers with their
children in tow. That's a positive sign that the majority of local
residents have their heads screwed on straight, and aren't fooled by the
silly mumbo-jumbo being spewed by these anti-EM radiation groups.

The
video shows three people addressing the camera. The first is what
appears to be a concerned parent who has simply been mis-informed by her
peers about the issue. The second woman has all the smug,
self-satisfaction of the true activist. She has all her talking points
down, and her rant so smoothly practiced that she can effectively
prevent anyone from getting a word in edgewise to rebut her claims. This
is a standard tactic of those who do not have the facts on their side.
If you do not ever let your opponents speak, they can never correct you.

The
third person to speak is one of the children. This is the part that
brings tears to my eyes, and rage to my heart. "It's our human rights,"
he says. "They're experimenting on us," he says. "In ten years, we're
all going to have cancer," he says. Can you believe that? This poor
child has been told, by his mother no less, that he's going to get
cancer if he goes to school. That's abuse, as far as I'm concerned. The
kid's going to have nightmares for the rest of his life. Who does that
to a child? Number one: it's a lie. Number two: it doesn't matter if
it's a frickin' lie, or not; it's an horrific thing to say to a child.
That's a parent whose own personal crusade is more important to her than
her child's emotional health, and it makes me insane.